Sunday 23 April 2017 17.34 EDT
First published on Sunday 23 April 2017 17.29 EDT

Wladimir Klitschko believes the manner in which he and Anthony Joshua have conducted themselves in the build-up to their heavyweight fight at Wembley on Saturday has presented a “great message” about boxing and is in contrast to the way Tyson Fury and David Haye, two of his former opponents, have behaved when promoting fights.

“It’s a great message, the way the fight is being promoted,” said Klitschko. “If we compare it to many other big fights, it was never done this way. To fill out a 90,000 stadium... I heard we could have sold it three times. And we really didn’t do too much.

“And we didn’t use the F-word. We were not throwing tables and glasses. No T-shirts. The attitude and the respect to each other is being passed down to all the other young men down there in the gyms.”

Klitschko’s reference to the “F-word”, “throwing tables and glasses” and “T-shirts” are obvious references to Fury and Haye. Fury, who stripped Klitschko of his WBA, IBF and WBO titles when he beat the 41-year-old in Düsseldorf 17 months ago, has developed a reputation for delivering controversial and shocking displays at pre-fight press conferences. In 2011, while promoting his rematch with Dereck Chisora in Manchester, he directed a foul-mouthed rant at his opponent before turning over a table and marching out of the room.

Asked if he has learnt from the defeat, only the fourth he has suffered in a 68-fight, 27-year career as a pro, Klitschko said: “I haven’t changed my team. We were successful for a long time and we are going to show on 29 April that it was not a coincidence.

“This is an opportunity for every single member of my team to recoup and show sometime we have bumps in the road and that is OK. We have a chance to fix our mistakes.”